Archive for the 'Wayne Gretzky' Tag Under 'Ducks' Category

EDMONTON, Alberta -- Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau had quite the Monday night out that it was worth waking up his wife, Crystal, and giving her all the juicy details afterward.

On a travel day with his team, Boudreau had dinner and was returning to his hotel room in Vancouver when he learned that Wayne Gretzky was in town and actually looking to meet up with him.

"It blew me away," Boudreau recalled. "I got a call from Sergey [Kocharov]. who's the PR guy in Washington. And he said, 'I hope you don't mind, I gave Wayne your number. He was looking for it.' And I was, 'Whoa. What's that all about.' I've met him once. I've idolized him for 100 years.

"So he called and said, 'Hey, it's Wayne. I'm just across the street. You want to go for a drink?' And I hemmed and hawed. He says, 'C'mon, for a beer.' And I'm like, I can't dis Wayne Gretzky. I was like a kid in a candy store, just wide-eyed and listening to him.

"He's everything as a person that I thought he would be when I envision stuff. It was very neat."

With the Ducks visiting Toronto on their most recent road trip, this reporter thought it would be good to squeeze in a visit to the Hockey Hall of Fame and bring you some sights from the place that celebrates the history of the sport.

The Hockey Hall of Fame was originally established in 1943 in Kingston, Ontario largely through the efforts of James T. Sutherland, who was the president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. It was then moved to Toronto in 1958, where it opened as an exhibit in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame at Exhibition Place.

Relocated to downtown Toronto in 1993, the Hall of Fame is located in the old Bank of Montreal building at the corner of Yonge and Front streets and extends underground into Brookfield Place. It has 50,600 square feet of exhibition space and hosts more than 300,000 visitors each year.

The greatest players in the history of ice hockey are of course featured and in honor of Wayne Gretzky turning 50 on Wednesday, we'll add a little fun poll that is as straightforward as it gets: Who is the greatest hockey player of all-time?

If you weren't already a hockey fan in Southern California (and raise your hand if you were), chances are you became one after that day, when the Edmonton Oilers did the unthinkable and traded Wayne Gretzky to the Kings.

The ensuing change in the regional sports landscape laid the foundation for the NHL to place teams in San Jose and Anaheim.

Filmmaker Peter Berg re-examines the Gretzky trade in an ESPN documentary called "Kings Ransom" that will air tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN2.

The so-called "mini-film" is the first in a series called "30 in 30" in which 30 filmmakers were assigned to make a film with a sports bent to go along with the ESPN's 30th year of existence.